The RNLI New Lifeboat

Tuesday 14th December, the RNLI New Lifeboat
Richard Moss a Senior Project Engineer with the RNLI based in Poole entertained forty-five members and guests to an excellent lecture. Richard has an honours degree in mechanical engineering and an MSc in Marine Engineering so was well qualified to talk us through some of the interesting aspects of lifeboat engineering.
His talk began with a brief outline of the services provided by the RNLI and how these had developed and changed over the years, especially over the last 30 – 40 years or so.
He then went on to describe the many types of lifeboat currently in service with the service and the current development of faster craft to allow quicker rescue attempts. Many of the engineering problems associated with the development and manufacture of large craft capable of operating at speeds of up to 25 knots were described, not least those of making the craft comfortable for crew to operate at these speeds in rough seas. This led onto a description of some of the difficulties associated with launching such large craft from exposed beaches and the even more significant problem of recovering them afterwards.
At the end there were many questions from the audience. This was a talk in the words of the speaker, which could have gone on much longer than the time we had available.